At 6:30 a.m., I’m checking to make sure the power still works after I start the coffee maker. Each morning I have to choose between running the washing machine and flipping the coffee maker on in this village. Coffee generally wins.
At 7:30 I sit down on my blue floor-level mattress to meet with Jesus for a time. By 8:15, my team is finding ways to pull themselves out of bed. Today, our team was asked to attend a “Fest” by our host, a Catholic priest. We don blue jeans and wash our faces. We look cute but not attractive. It’s just a “Fest”.
By 9:45, we are all out on the driveway, waiting for the bus. It’s funny how bus stops are one of the most attractive aspects of Moldova other than the landscape. Most bus stops look like they’ve been bejeweled by a professional.
At 10:30, I realize for the first time that every local here has a picket fence. As the bus travels onward, it hits me that fences aren’t for the completion of the American dream in Moldova, but are to keep the neighboring goats and ducks out of each family’s garden groceries.
We end up at the “Fest” hours later, attending Mass first and then grazing for lunch afterward. We are offered carbonated water and oddly shaped meatballs by the church ladies. Most everything tastes good. The sardines get my team all the time: we’ve learned how to appropriately refuse them by now.
At 2:16 p.m. we pull away from the church and ride home with the nuns. As they chat to us in Russian and offer us fresh tomatoes, my team dozes off for the long ride home.
By 4:11 I’m bored still as the bus slows. Cows are crossing the street ahead of us on the freeway. Later, the ducks make a crossing as well. I don’t think I’ll ever get oriented with the idea that ducks travel in groups like middle school girls do, chattering and yapping at each other the entire way to where they’re going. The ducks often cross my path back in the village, turning to me with such gumption that I stop and let them cross in fear of my own well-being.
By 5:34, we’ve made it home and I sit down to finish watching the movie, White Christmas. Sometimes it hurts to think that I won’t be home for Christmas and that I truly will only make it there in my dreams this year. I’m celebrating early in the hopes that December 24th and 25th aren’t as bad as I think they will be.
We end up in bed by 10:30, sipping hot tea and settling down into our iPod mode, drifting off into dreams with the natural air-conditioner coming in through the windows.
Moldova is my favorite European country thus far. The people are too hospitable and friendly to give that honor away to Ireland or Ukraine. Considering most people back home don’t know where Moldova is anyway, I figured this country could use the attention.
It’s not that our lives are glamorous here in this tiny village. It’s that our lives are sweetly simple. We work with our hands in the fields and come home to playing with children and teaching them English. Things here move at a pace that slows even my American tendencies. I like it here. You won’t find me living in Moldova any longer than the 30th of September this year, but I would like to come back and visit…if only to see if the ducks will let me pass.
(Photo taken by Ali Kendrick)
